Opinion: We Wrecked Our Economy for Nothing

Unemployed people, numbering about 5,000, wait outside the State Labor Bureau which houses the State Temporary Employment Relief administration in New York City, Nov. 24, 1933. The crowd began to gather at 5 a.m. to register for possibly 90,000 federal relief jobs during the Great Depression. (AP Photo)

Imagine, if you will, an edict from your Mayor, Governor, the President, or all three. This edict targets you and 30 million other citizens simply because you are a member of a specific economic class or category of worker. Your vocation has been determined to be “non-essential.” The directive is clear. You will forgo your wages for an indeterminate period of time. You have no choice. If you fail to comply, you face fines and/or imprisonment. The stated objectives of all of this, are to preclude the medical system from being overwhelmed and to increase the lifespan of one million people, many of whom would perish within 6 months anyhow from already existing conditions.

This is exactly what has happened. The federal government has encouraged mayors and governors to enact certain “social distancing” guidelines and forbade workers in “non essential’ occupations from earning a paycheck. This has, over the past few months, caused over 30 million people to become newly unemployed and unable to feed their families. This number will continue to rise. It is not much of a reach to believe we could hit 20% unemployment…numbers we haven’t gotten to since the Great Depression.

There is little-to-no actual science behind this draconian decision. The experts told us that by sacrificing the jobs of 30 million people (and still counting) we would “flatten the curve” on new infections and thus keep our hospital system from being overwhelmed. The “experts” and their models have been proven wrong time and again throughout this debacle.

The expected tidal wave never struck the hospital system as a whole. Point of fact, because of deferred procedures put off in order to free up bed space for the expected surge, many hospitals have laid of staff and some have shut their doors…permanently. The United States is now exporting ventilators.

As more and more information comes in, we are seeing that this virus is not nearly as infectious as previously thought, and it is far less deadly. When it comes right down to it, this disease is going to end up with a Mortality Rate at or below our annual flu average. For that, we brought direct harm, pain, and suffering to 30 million other Americans.

The Chicken Little folks supporting Dr. Fauci and COL/Dr. Birx are claiming that we saved a million U.S lives by shutting down our economy. Fine. Let’s do some math. For the sake of argument, let’s agree here that without closing up our economy, the number of U.S. Fatalities would have reached 1.1 Million. Let’s also assume that by invoking Dr. Fauci’s draconian measures, we were able to cut that number down to 100,000 (I chose 1.1M and 100K in order to make the math simpler).

Bottom line? For each life allegedly saved, we as a nation, the states & localities severally, DEMANDED under threat of fines and/or imprisonment, that 30 other (non-essential) American workers forgo their paychecks. We (corporate we) told select classes of people that we were going to essentially deny them the ability to make a living…and without any sort of due process whatsoever.

Basically, the governors and mayors with the encouragement of the federal government denied the civil rights of broad swaths of the American citizenry. They abridged the right to earn a living on the unproven chance that it might save a stranger’s life. What’s worse, it wasn’t like we demanded that all of America make this sacrifice. No. We actually forced the weakest (financially) among us to carry this load. Interestingly, I find anecdotally that the folks most interested in keeping this shutdown in place until we are “perfectly safe,” aren’t the hourly wage, service industry workers who have been forced to shoulder almost this entire burden. Nope. It’s the “essential workers,” people whose occupation allows telecommuting, the media, and, of course, folks on government salaries.

Mind you, none of the above was done via legislative action, which might have made it somewhat more palatable. It was all done via executive orders, big and small. As new data comes in, we are seeing that all of this had little-to-no effect on the spread of the virus nor the number of fatalities. We trampled on the Constitution, destroyed our economy, and wrecked the lives of millions of Americans…for nothing. And we aren’t done yet.

Mike Ford, a retired Infantry Officer, writes on Military, Foreign Affairs and occasionally dabbles in Political and Economic matters.Â